Real food fermentation: preserving whole fresh food with live cultures in your home kitchen

177 Pages·2012·19.7 MB·English

by  Alex Lewin

REAL FOOD FERMENTATION
REAL FOOD FERMENTATION
Preserving Whole Fresh Food with
Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen
ALEX LEWIN
To Mom and Dad,
who showed me how to eat and how to question.
____________________________________
INTRODUCTION:
FERMENTATION JOURNEY 9
How to Use This Book 10
Playing with Our Food 12
CHAPTER 1
__________________________________
FOOD PRESERVING (IN BRIEF) 16
What Is Food Preserving? 18
The Art and Craft of Home Preserving 22
Why We Need Microbes and Enzymes 26
Ways to Delay Decay 27
When Is a Food Preserved? 31
An Overwiew of Fermentation:
Getting to Know the Process 32
Health Benefits of Fermentation 34
CONTENTS Stocking Your Science Lab 36
CHAPTER 2
__________________________________
KNOW YOUR INGREDIENTS 40
The Freshness Factor 42
Getting Real about Food 50
Real Food, Real Mission 57
CHAPTER 3
__________________________________
SAUERKRAUT 58
Basic Sauerkraut 61
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 7
__________________________________ __________________________________
BEYOND BASIC SAUERKRAUT: FERMENTED BEVERAGES 126
LACTO-FERMENTED
Hard Apple Cider 132
VEGETABLES 66
Mead 138
Which Vegetables (and/or Fruit) Wine (in Brief) 140
Should I Use? 68
Beer and Kvass (in Brief) 143
How Should I Cut the Vegetables?
Kombucha 144
Or Should I? 70
Vinegar 152
Will I Need to Add More Liquid to
Submerge Everything? 71 Other Cultured Beverages 155
Do I Need to Peel Everything Ginger Ale 156
Beforehand? 72 Time to Experiment 159
Which Starter Should I Use, If Any? 72
Do I Want Additional Fermenting
Insurance? 73 CHAPTER 8
__________________________________
Which Seasonings Should I Add? 73
Lacto-Fermented Vegetables 75
MEAT AND OTHER
Fermented Carolina-Style Slaw 78
FERMENTED FOODS 160
Cucumber Pickles 82
Kimchi 86 Corned Beef 162
More Fermented Foods 164
CHAPTER 5
__________________________________
Resources 168
DAIRY 94 Acknowledgments 170
About the Author 171
Which Milk Should I Buy? 96
Index 172
Yogurt 98
Strained Yogurt and Whey 102
Kefir 104
Crème Fraîche 107
Butter and Buttermilk 110
CHAPTER 6
__________________________________
FERMENTED FRUIT
CONDIMENTS 114
Preserved Lemons and Limes 116
Peach and Plum Chutney
with Preserved Lime 120
Pico de Gallo 122
INTRODUCTION:
FERMENTATION JOURNEY
____________________________________

I like changing things for the better. I am curious about how
things work. And I think a lot about food.
I love the idea of transforming food, in harmony with nature, as it has been
done for thousands of years. Sauerkraut, for instance, need contain nothing
more than cabbage and salt—no mysterious chemicals, no additives, not even
any vinegar. So simple, yet so complex: Fermentation occurs because we
seduce microscopic beings into doing our biochemical bidding, and they
create sour acids that can preserve cabbage for many seasons.
I also love the process of making fermented foods. It is a checklist of gratify-
ing activities. I go to a farmers’ market or a farm, chat with food producers,
and pay them a fair price for their work. I think creatively about what food
I want to make. I craft the food myself, using whatever tools are available,
sometimes improvising, and I often wind up with something great. In time,
I get the reward of eating it—and sharing it with my community of friends
and family.
When we make our own food, we regain some control over our lives—
especially at a time in history when many of us feel at the mercy of events,
governments, corporations, and industrial food producers. We also bridge the
global gulf between the people who make food and the people who eat it, a
gulf that perpetuates a grim litany of problems from famine and obesity to
pollution, water shortages, wars over scarce resources, and deforestation.
I am delighted to share with you my passion for fermentation.
Take what you want from this book, experiment, and set out on your own
food journey so that you might transform your food, your world, and yourself.
9
Recipes in some chapters depend on ingredients that
HOW TO USE
you make in other chapters. When this is the case, I
THIS BOOK point it out, so of course you can jump back and forth
and read the relevant sections as needed. Fermented

fruit condiments, for instance, require a starter, and
Each chapter has a specific focus. The first chapter is
making sauerkraut and straining yogurt are two good
an overview of food preserving. Chapter 2 discusses
ways to get a starter. If you’ve already read about
choosing ingredients. Chapter 3 provides an in-depth
making sauerkraut and straining yogurt, you will
look at making sauerkraut, and then chapter 4 broadens
understand the starters you need for making fruit
to other fermented vegetables. The remaining chapters
condiments. If you haven’t, you might need to go back
walk you through fermenting dairy, fruit condiments,
and read those sections again.
beverages, and meat.
The more you have thought about the sources of your
Perhaps all you want to do is make fermented fruit
ingredients, the more satisfaction you may get out of
chutney. With a typical cookbook, you might simply
a recipe, and in some cases, the better the recipe will
turn to the chutney recipe and follow it without reading
work—and the healthier it will be. For this reason, you
the whole chapter. With this book, I encourage you to
may find it useful to read the chapter about selecting
skim the entire chapter, or even the whole book, first!
ingredients, chapter 2, before you try any of the recipes.
Knowledge is cumulative, and points made earlier in
For instance, it is good to understand when chlorinated
the book inform the recipes throughout.
water can be a problem, along with ways that you can
People read books, especially cookbooks, in their remove chlorine from water; when it’s most important
own way. And many people don’t want to be told how to avoid pesticide-treated fruit; and the relative merits
to read a book. But I do have reasons for making my of diferent kinds of salt.
suggestions.
If I’ve done my job right, then the early chapters will
give you information to help you understand why the
recipes work, some peace of mind about why they are
safe, a better idea of what to do when things go wrong,
and tools to help you decide how you might or might
not want to modify the recipes as you continue to
make them.
10 REAL FOOD FERMENTATION